The percentage of infants in families enrolled in the Maternal, Infant, and Early Childhood Home Visiting (MIECHV) Program who received any breast milk at age 6 months has risen since FY 2017, according to recent Child Trends Analysis.
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A recent Child Trend blog provides strategies for researchers and program staff to keep young people engaged throughout the duration of a voluntary after-school program.
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Child Trends’ new brief identifies several strengths and areas for continued growth in organizations' youth engagement efforts.
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Our recent blog highlights three policies and practices—automatic enrollment, program re-entry after exit before age 21, and robust supportive housing services—that some states have implemented to boost participation in extended foster care programs.
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Child Trends’ interactive map shows how Maryland's Child Care Scholarship program helps tens of thousands of families with low incomes access highly rated child care each month: On average, nearly half of recipients in any given ZIP code use highly rated programs.
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A new Child Trends blog identifies existing gaps in the research on CTE in youth correctional settings and highlights promising approaches, including strong partnerships, labor market alignment and credential pathways, hands-on learning, and post-release support.
In 2025, 13 states enacted legislation pertaining to the intersection of youth justice systems and schools. A new Child Trends blog post illustrates these trends by presenting the most common legislative approaches enacted in 2025.
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Our recent resource provides three areas of decision making for assessing whether children can experience safe and stable homes. They reflect how system-level policies and capacities shape children’s day-to-day experiences of safety, stability, and permanency. www.childtrends.org/publications...
From October 2024 to May 2025, Vermont families participating in the child care subsidy program spent about 5% of their income on child care, according to our brief exploring the effects of Vermont’s recent policy changes on families’ child care cost burden.
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Image is a tile map (where all states are represented by squares of the same size) showing the Fiscal Year (FY) 2024 percentages of U.S. children in foster care who were placed with relatives, by state. Nationally, 30% of children in foster care were placed with relatives. The states with the highest percentages placed with relatives were Vermont (56%) and West Virginia (53%). The states with the lowest were Massachusetts (2%), Tennessee (4%), and Montana (7%). Most states were between 20% and 39%.
A Child Trends analysis of federal foster care data shows that, nationally, 30% of U.S. children in foster care were in kinship care and states vary widely in using formal kinship care placements—largely due to differences in state-level practices and policies.
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A recent Child Trend blog post provides five strategies for researchers and practitioners for recruiting and enrolling adolescents in voluntary after-school sex education programs.
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Access to ECE is about more than increasing the number of slots in care. It’s about designing systems that give families meaningful choices—options that match their schedules, cultures, budgets, and hopes for their children. www.childtrends.org/research-cen...
The @annieecaseyfdn.bsky.social's Generation Work Initiative partnered with local partnerships to integrate positive youth development (PYD) approaches in workforce training settings for youth. We produced case studies about five of these local partnerships. www.childtrends.org/project/gene...
Our experts outlined ways to improve child care costs for households receiving housing assistance. www.childtrends.org/publications...
Among households with children that paid any out-of-pocket costs for child care, those that receive a housing voucher and have children under age 4 pay more than households with children ages 4–6, according to Child Trends’ new resource.
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NEW: We highlight three policies and practices—automatic enrollment, program re-entry after exit before age 21, and robust supportive housing services—that some states have implemented to boost participation in extended foster care programs.
www.childtrends.org/publications...
Some of the content boys see online about relationships, consent, and masculinity can be harmful. We address common questions for youth-supporting professionals and other caring adults in young people’s lives about this harmful content.
Our new brief examines two categories of policies from state Child Care and Development Fund policies to see how they impact access to and cost of child care for families of children with disabilities.
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Want to stay up to date on the Healthy and Ready to Learn (HRTL) measure? Subscribe to get HRTL updates directly in your inbox and be the first to know when new data, analyses, and resources are available. childtrends.us16.list-manage.com/subscribe?u=...
Why focus on development at age 3? Because it provides a critical window into how children are developing and how early investments are paying off. Our dashboard shows national and state-level snapshots of 3-year-olds’ development.
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Recent federal funding expansions create opportunities to strategically harness the benefits of home visiting services for American Indian and Alaska Native children and families, and to use data and evaluation to ensure that those benefits are achieved.
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More than 1 in 4 children and youth (birth to age 21) in foster care (27%) are reported to have a diagnosed Special Health Care Need, according to Child Trends analysis.
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Image shows a bar chart under the headline, "Nearly 10 percent of all infants were admitted to a neonatal intensive care unit (NICU) in 2023." The title of the figure is "Percentage of infants admitted to the NICU in 2023, by birthing parent race and Hispanic origin." The percentage for all children was 9.8%. For Black non-Hispanic children, 13.2%. For Native Hawaiian and Pacific Islander, non-Hispanic children, 10.9%. For American Indian and Alaska Native, non-Hispanic children, 10.7%. For White non-Hispanic children, 9.4%. For Hispanic children, 8.9%. For Asian non-Hispanic children, 8.6%. Data source: NCHS Data Brief, Number 525, March 2025; originally from National Center for Health Statistics, National Vital Statistics System, natality data file.
Nearly 10% of all infants were admitted to a neonatal intensive care unit (NICU) in 2023. A new Child Trends blog post explores a Colorado law taking effect this year that will provide up to 12 weeks of additional paid leave for parents with an infant in the NICU.
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*UPDATED DATA* - Child Trends has updated its popular child welfare data interactive with federal fiscal year 2024 national and state data on foster care, maltreatment, relative caregiving, permanency, and older youth in care.
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Resource: Activate Center breaks down the three interconnected processes of consent (seeking, giving, and receiving) and what research says about how these dynamics shape communication and decision-making in sexual relationships.
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The ECE Access Center brings together evaluation, data analysis, peer learning, and customized technical assistance to offer you the level of support you need—no matter where you are in your system-building journey. www.childtrends.org/research-cen...
Vermont’s Act 76, passed in 2023, dramatically increased the number of families who are eligible for and receive child care subsidies. See how it’s playing out for families and child care providers.
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The percentage of children who have experienced at least one adverse childhood experience (ACE) declined slightly from 2018 to 2023 across the United States, but the prevalence of ACEs varies considerably by state, according to a new Child Trends analysis.
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A recent Child Trends’ brief—funded by @annieecaseyfdn.bsky.social—explores the services that Family Resource Centers provide across the country, especially to young parents (under age 25). www.childtrends.org/publications...
Our new resource examines what current federal data can and cannot measure to show progress toward the new federal initiative, A Home for Every Child. We need to prioritize a set of high-value indicators, refine existing measures, and strengthen data quality.
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